I grew up on trashy horror movies, pulp sci-fi, and comic book gore, so I was expecting the End of the World to be, well, a little more exciting maybe?

Zombie Apocalypse! Sounds bloody scary, right?

Boooooring!

Hours and hours of TV news loops, Houses of Parliament playing verbal volleyball, blaming everyone from the last Liberal government to those sneaky Russians for the slow, inexorable Extinction of Humankind.

The Yanks were a little (not much) more animated, Pres tweeting wildly about Canadian bacon causing 'minor' illnesses, reports of flesh eating undead here in Washington, fake news, real fake, I know the undead, good people, great Americans…..

He was actually almost right. Not about bacon, but the flesh-eating bit.

Herds of dearly departed were indeed milling around DC, and London, and Moscow - you get the idea, the world was screwed!

But no flesh eating, not even a nibble, the zombies (and that's like calling a kitten a man-eating sabre-toothed tiger) simply milled about in herds, touching people's shoulders, in a polite but unnervingly rotten fleshed way, whispering "Sorry!"

Unfortunately, that rotten touch spread some kind of germ, bug, cootie, pathogen, (insert scientific term for immediate flesh rotting death, followed by resurrection with a propensity to apologise here), no cure. Dead. Game over. Global mass Extinction with that Hallmark touch.

'Sorry to hear you're dead, would you like to join us for a bit of milling about and a lot of apologising?'

The last of us exist in small groups, heavily padded shoulders, and ears defended at all times. Some continue to work towards a cure, others simply accept the apologetic touch and join the herds.

In truth, I'm bored to death with Armageddon, bored with the whole debate on TV, bored with the 24hour images of milling and apologising.

Think I'll go out for a walk.

'Sorry!'

Freewayriding

21.10.19 Front Page

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